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The 'Sannyas Falling Apart' Article. Points from Sam Perhaps the good folk from Pune have a point when they say the trouble is no one wants to do White Robe Brotherhood. Certainly I feel the Sannyasnews Team have put their finger on something when they speak of "the central sacramental role vital to an alive community" and the fact we haven't got one. The other thing which strikes me, or perhaps it's part of the same thing, is the fact sannyasins have never really come to grips with meditation, with the 'witnessing' which was the leitmotiv of Osho's whole teaching– the one, the only thing from which he never budged an inch. Personally I first came to Osho because of his insistence that witnessing and awareness were virtually impossible without some degree of therapy – which struck me then, as it strikes me now, as being completely true. For several years I ran Osho meditation groups in central London and the conclusion I came to (sorry about this) was... they didn't work. Not that the principles along which they were structured were wrong, not even that they wouldn't work in a country commune– I'd say they need to be an organic part of your daily life– but that in the hyper-tense inner city they simply weren't strong enough. For the past eighteen months I've been experimenting in a (I hope) remotely sane way with LSD. This I've tried to explore as something working on exactly the same therapy/meditation interface as an Osho meditation. Same high energy... Same expression of repressed emotion... Same intense almost terrifying focus on the immediate present moment... Same mind-boggling 'esoteric' experience... And the same revelation of the presence of God... I feel this could prove relevant to many of us, but acid's so volatile I still can't be sure. But I do see all my experiments as taking place within the overarching context of Osho's 'meditative therapy.' Please don't get me wrong. I am not, repeat not, saying everyone should take LSD. What I am saying is that we should all be more creative and experimental– and not be frightened we are betraying sannyas by doing so. Osho was incurably iconoclastic and experimental– surely that was what we were all attracted to?– and to try and freeze his work within any kind of 'Church' is deadly. This is why everyone instinctively feels White Robe is a miss. Osho would never have stuck with one thing, he would have been, in fact was, innovating to the very end. For Osho risk-taking was all. Once sannyas loses its wildness it really will be dead.
Sam